


A Curious Visitor

by yuans_crotch



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Ineffable husbands is mostly backround mentions, gilgamesh was the original fuckboy, i gave aziraphale a snarky inner dialogue and im not sorry about it, no beta we die like men, the epic of gilgamesh - Freeform, with a surprise guest appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 07:33:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20373028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuans_crotch/pseuds/yuans_crotch
Summary: Aziraphale's quiet day is interuppted by an American with things to prove about ancient texts.Heavily inspired by the fake yelp reviews for Aziraphale's book shop





	A Curious Visitor

**Author's Note:**

> honestly ive written some super self indulgent things but this? This takes the cake. I'm out here making content for me and hopefully maybe someone else will enjoy it too  
I wrote this at like.midnight and im too embarrassed to send it to friends so that no beta tag should be taken seriously. I dont know what I'm doing.

A sweaty American barged into the shop, panting and wheezing. Aziraphale looked up at him expectantly.

"Please tell me you have multiple copies of the Epic of Gilgamesh." His glasses started to fog up due to the mild temperature difference between the outside and the inside of the shop, so he took them off and quickly gave them a rub with his t shirt. He tousled his brown curly hair in an attempt to make it less obviously sweaty. 

It didn't work.

"Oh you look exhausted. Here you go." Aziraphale gave him a cold glass of water he miracled out from behind his back. The young man did not seem to take note of the miraculous water appearance and just took it with a grateful "Thank you." He flopped on the old couch with a sigh of relief before rustling through his satchel. "I'll see what I can find" Aziraphale went into the back to see if he could find some copies, hoping the young man wouldn't actually buy them, just look. 

He came back with a few books in hand. The young man was angrily texting away on his mobile while a pair of gloves sat in his lap and a large notebook was next to him. 

"If you don't mind my curiosity, what do you need multiple Epics for?" Aziraphale gently placed the books on the table in front of the couch. 

"Got into an argument with an asshole online, trying to say that Gilgamesh and Enkidu weren't in a romantic relationship." He slipped the gloves on, which upon closer inspection, looked to be white cotton. He carefully picked up the first tome and leafed through the pages. He scrunched up his nose and put the book down before picking up the next one. Aziraphale tried not to stare, but he was rather animated in his search for certain passages. 

"You brought gloves?"

"Oh yeah, uh." The young man chuckled sheepishly. "My hands can get kinda sweaty and I didn't wanna risk damaging whatever rare copies of the Epic you have." He looked down at the book open in his lap and gasped. He whispered under his breath, almost too quiet to be heard, "I got you now, fucker." 

Aziraphale smiled. "What did you find?"

There was a mischievous glint in the young man's eyes. "A good translation of the scene where Gilgamesh and Enkidu go before Ninsun before they hunt Humbaba for her blessing. This just screams wedding, you know? They're holding hands in front of the godly in-law and she claims Enkidu as her own child, basically accepting him into the family. Like, come on." He picks up his mobile again. "Oh! Mr uh..."

"Call me Mr. Fell." Aziraphale finally sits down on another couch, not wanting to mess up the workspace that seems to have sprung from the young man's bag. 

"Oh, well that makes sense. Seeing how your name is on the shop. Anyway, I'm Lukas. It's an absolute pleasure to meet you." He beamed a large smile at Aziraphale. "Thanks for letting me go through your books, I'm sure you have much more important things to do."

Aziraphale waved him off. "The fact that any young man would start a fight over the meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh is much more interesting than anything else I could be doing at the moment."

Lukas hardened his gaze. "I can't stand the type of people who think that Gilgamesh and Enkidu weren't in love. I mean, at the end of Enkidu's life," He carefully turned some pages. "Yeah, see here?" He turned the book to face Aziraphale and pointed out a passage. "You don't build grand statues made out of gold for just anyone. You don't cry for weeks and then go on a month long journey for just anyone. They were married and no one can convince me otherwise." He had this passion in his eyes that surprised Aziraphale. "Only gays are this overdramatic." The absolute seriousness of his tone with the strange sentence that just came out of his mouth made Aziraphale chuckle.

"Oh fuck that sounds bad. I'm gay. I'm not just some stereotyping weirdo with a passion for Gilgamesh." He had placed the book back down on the table and started waving his hands while he talked. His wild flailing made Aziraphale laugh. 

"Don't worry Lukas, I didn't get the wrong idea." He was vaguely reminded of when Crowley slept for 100 years after their disagreement about holy water, and silently agreed on the sentiment of overdramatic gays. 

Lukas visibly relaxed with this, and carried on before shaking his head "Oh! I forgot to ask. Is it ok if I take a picture of some pages as proof? I won't use flash." 

"Go right ahead." If he takes pictures of the book, Aziraphale thought to himself, he's less likely to buy it. After snapping a few pictures of the version of the Epic in front of him, he picked up another copy and carefully glanced through it. He stopped at a certain page that seemed to have caught his attention by accident. A few seconds of him staring down at the book was suddenly interrupted by his loud laughter. Aziraphale was spooked and placed a hand over his heart.

"Goodness, what did you find?"

"It's the scene where Ishtar proposes to Gilgamesh and he gives her a laundry list of reasons why he would never, while he and Enkidu laugh her out of the court. I know this is the beginning of the end of Enkidu, but I love this scene. It's the perfect example of why you shouldn't propose in public. They completely humiliate her. This translator did a wonderful job." He did not look up while describing what he was reading, instead softly laughing at the book in his lap. 

Aziraphale took note of the",shouldn't propose in public" rule that he had not heard of until today. Wasn't it common place for humans to do so?

"It's been a long time since I've met someone this passionate about the Epic of Gilgamesh." Aziraphale was curious indeed about this young man. It's not every day that someone with this intimate knowledge of multiple versions of the Epic comes in to talk. 

He laughed and looked down sheepishly. "Yeah, i've got some strange interests. But the Epic just feels so validating."

"Validating?"

"Yeah!" He perked up and straightened out his back. "It's the oldest known human story! And its so..." He paused, trying to find the right word, "It's just so gay. Gilgamesh was this spoiled tyrant who got whatever he wanted and his mom made him a human impulse control. Like, Enkidu was literally made for Gilgamesh. The Epic just warms my heart." He smiled and held his hands to his chest. "Here, in this ancient human story, are two men that love each other and there's no bigotry to tell them that it's wrong or unnatural. Their love is the most natural thing in the world!" His brightness and adoration radiated off of him while he sang praises for the Epic. "It's just too bad Enkidu died. Far too many queer people die in fiction." He got visibly sadder in an instant, his shoulders drooping and his voice going from excited American back down to a reasonable conversation level.  
Aziraphale nodded along. "I quite agree." He pondered for a second. "I think I have an older copy of the Epic somewhere. I'll be right back." He swiftly got up from the couch and went into the deeper catacombs of the book shop. He looked around for a bit, before getting impatient and simply miracling the boxes that he was searching for into his arms. He wobbled a bit as they were miraculously placed into his arms. Goodness, he thought, these are a bit more heavy than I remembered. He waddled over to the front of the shop again, careful to watch his feet for any stray books in his way. 

"Lukas!" He called out. "I think I have something you'll be interested in!" The young man looked up from the book and his eyes grew to the size of dinner plates at the tower of boxes Aziraphale was carrying. 

"Mr. Fell, do you need help?" He quickly placed the book on his lap back onto the table and got up to help preemptively.

"Not to worry, I've got a handle on this."

Aziraphale did not have a handle on this, and nearly had the top box whacked off by a stray umbrella sticking out of a bookcase. Lukas rushed over and caught it before it was too late. The strange noise that came from the box, however, quickly gave away that what was in the boxes was not books. Lukas looked down into the box and gasped.

"Are these... Original tablets?" He gazed down in wonder at the contents of the box. He breathed out "holy fuck" like a prayer. 

"A good eye! They are indeed! Now, help me get these to the table before I go and lose another box. 

Honestly he would have just miracled the box to make sure no tablets broke if he dropped it, but he wouldn't turn down the help. They both walked back over to the table and carefully placed the boxes down. There were five in total, so the books that had previously taken up residency on the table had to be stacked off next to it on the ground to make room. Lukas carefully reached into one box and pulled out a tablet. He looked it over, front and back, and marveled at it. 

"I mean absolutely no disrespect Mr Fell, but shouldn't these be in the British Museum or something?" Lukas quirked an eyebrow up at him.

"Oh these are just reproductions!" This, of course, was a lie, but he would Fall before he let any of them out of his collection. He worked too hard to keep them for so long. 

Why couldn't Gilgamesh just have written his epic on something more portable? Even in death, he's still making things difficult for the people around him. 

Lukas smiled at the tablets again. "Oh, what I would give to be able to read these." His gloved hands barely tracing the ancient words spelling out the long dead king's adventures with his dearest companion. "Ancient Sumerian isn't exactly a common Uni course." 

"It's a terrible language to make yourself learn. The grammar rules break themselves all the time and the characters have to be written very precisely in order to get your meaning clear." Aziraphale sighed. He was glad that language was long dead. He had too many embarrassing mishaps with the slightest of mispronounced words giving people the wrong idea about him. 

"Mr Fell, you can read these?" The look that Lukas gave Aziraphale was one of complete awe. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows climbed high upon his forehead and his jaw dropped. 

"Please do not ask me to teach you." Aziraphale knew himself to be a terrible, impatient teacher at times, especially with languages he was not very fond of. 

"Oh no I didn't mean-" The tablet was carefully placed back into the box and Lukas continued, flailing his arms in front of him. "Teaching languages is super time and energy intensive and I would never ask a stranger to-" 

Aziraphalr cut him off before he rambled too much, as it was painfully obvious that Lukas is the type to do so. "Don't fret. I was just jumping to conclusions." Aziraphale sat back onto the couch opposite of Lukas's things and pulled out a tablet. 

He blushed as he picked up just the tablet that had a description of Enkidu's sexual escapades with the priestess Shamhat.

Lukas smiled at the strange reaction. "Find something good?"

"Ah well, it's the part where Enkidu uh" he coughs into his fist, "Learns to become more human."

Lukas's inquisitive smile turned into a more devious one. "You mean where he and Shamhat fucked for two weeks straight?" 

Aziraphale was caught off guard by the comment. He blinked and met Lukas's eyes while the young man laughed at his embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't poke fun at someone who has helped me so much, and who I just met." The smile on his face spoke otherwise. 

At the moment, the door broke down. Well, more like kicked down. 

Both men were startled, but luckily no tablets were dropped. They were put back in the boxes with a little hurry, though.

"Azzziraphale. Where is that uselezzzzz traitor Crowley." The extended Zs let Aziraphale know that none other than the Prince of Hell, Lord Beelzebub had just crashed into his shop, and they were very angry. He got up to great the smaller demon, who's face oozed not only anger, but puss.

Really, he thought to himself, there was no way you could have cleaned up a little before walking around on Earth? 

"He's not in at the moment, I'm afraid. Is there a message I can pass along?"

"Tell him he'zzzz dead meat if I zzzzzzee him again. He will pay for that venuzzzz fly trap in my office." Beelzebub snarled right in his face before turning around and leaving the shop back the way they came, stomping off back to Hell, presumably. 

"Right" Aziraphale said to no one in particular. 

He turned back to Lukas, to see the man with a blushing face and a look of amazement at the door. His pupils were blown wide and his breathing was heavy. 

"Who was that?" His eyes did not meet Aziraphale's, but kept looking at the hole where the door once was, as if Beelzebub was still there.

Some humans have the strangest taste, Aziraphale thought. 

"Ah that was... My partner's boss, sort of. It's complicated." 

"They were... Wow." Lukas's hand went over his chest. He shook his head out of the daze. "I-I mean uh, that was rather rude, wasn't it? To break your door over a venus fly trap?" Lukas tried to save face, but the blush on his face hadn't gone yet. 

"Well they are a bit particular about what is in their office." It was not actually a lie, just a more socially acceptable truth to a human. He couldn't exactly say "They have flies and they are very protective. Like a parent and their child." Without too many questions being asked. 

"Your partner sounds like he's in trouble. Why would you prank your own boss? And with such a weird plant." Lulas furrowed his eyebrows.

Aziraphale sighed. "He was always one for the smaller annoyances. Back to the tablets?"

"Oh yes, of course" Lukas relaxed back down on the couch. "Let me know If you find anymore raunchy bits" he laughed.

"That will be likely. Gilgamesh was always one to gloat about his achievements, both in and out of bed." Aziraphale remembered quite a few banquets with him just talking without end about the amazing things he did before Enkidu would finally make him sit down so everyone could eat.

"So you think that Gilgamesh wrote the Epic too! It's a personal favourite theory of mine. I mean, the descriptions of both him and Enkidu are both just so over the top complementary."

"Oh uh, yes of course" Aziraphale got a little too close to revealing just how old he was. 

A buzzing sound interrupted the conversation. Lulas looked down at his mobile and frowned. 

"Shit. I have to go. I spent more time here than I had anticipated and now im late to dinner." He quickly packed up his notebook. "I'm sorry, Mr Fell."

"What for?" Aziraphale cocked his head to the side.

"I took up a bunch of time and energy and I'm afraid I can't buy anything. I promised myself to not buy books so my suitcase wouldn't be ridiculously heavy like it was the last time I went back to the states." Lukas sounded genuinely guilty.

"Oh don't fret about it too much. It's not much of a hassle." 

Aziraphale was relieved the young man never actually planned to buy anything. 

"Ah, would it be ok," he trailed off before picking back up again, "If I stopped by again to read? I cant buy anything but I can bring you some food for your troubles? My grandma makes some amazing borscht." 

Aziraphale's smile grew wider. "That sounds lovely. Feel free to drop in at anytime." Anyone who wanted to come in, not buy and books, and give Aziraphale homemade food really was welcome at anytime. 

Lukas held out a hand. "It's been a real delight, Mr Fell."

Aziraphale took it and shook. "I think so too."

**Author's Note:**

> CROWLEY YOU CANT JUST LEAVE A PLANT IN BEELZEBUBS OFFICE SO IT CAN EAT THEIR BABIES THATS RUDE 
> 
> anyway this fic kinda makes me wanna write Aziraphale interacting with Gilgamesh so if theres any interest in some historical shenanigans with them let me know


End file.
